


Cavesson

by vyatka



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Gen, Kind of. Not really., Light Angst, Russia, Russian Bucky Barnes, Soviet Union, Winter Soldier Bucky Barnes, is a BIG OLD COMMIE, the winter soldier considers himself to be russian does that clear it up, this is REAL bad folks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-04
Updated: 2018-03-04
Packaged: 2019-03-26 16:20:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,515
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13861491
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vyatka/pseuds/vyatka
Summary: In less than a month, the Soviet Union will fall, and the Soldier will be thrown out with the rest of Russia's refuse.He doesn't know it yet.





	Cavesson

**Author's Note:**

> This takes place in something of a blend between the movie universe and the comics. Enjoy.

No one can say that the Soldier does not love his country. His memory is like a spiderweb - if he pushes too hard, it will break into sticky lovely threads - so he has been told that he grew up here, in this austerely beautiful land, whelped and whipped in Stalingrad, poor place to raise a child though it was. It must have been there that he became a soldier, back when he had a name and a mother and, he has been told, and almost remembers, siblings. Beautiful sisters. He thinks there might have been a brother, too, bold and small. He almost remembers. Sometimes he thinks of visiting them, or sending them letters. Always, when he mentions this, Karpov wants to see him, and then the thought goes right out of his mind. Like a bird off of a branch. 

Soon, he will get to go home. Soviet supremacy is near, everyone is saying. They are gaining a foothold in the West, at last; even the American people tire of their dishonest government and capitalist conspiracies. There is even a socialism movement taking root there. It won't be long until the Soldier's work will run out. He will miss it. And yet he will be glad that it is over. 

Delicate, he taps the metal of his left fingers along the glass of the south window. This Siberian compound has few windows. He likes this one. There is nothing to see but the purgatory expanse of snow, the view fringed by icicles, and yet he likes it anyway. 

In less than a month, the Soviet Union will fall, and the Soldier will be thrown out with the rest of Russia's refuse. 

He doesn't know it yet. 

The Soldier returns to Siberia expecting to be put back in the ice. Maybe a meal, first. Maybe not. He won't mind if he doesn't get one. The new cook is not as good as his predecessor. And, although he's not tired, he wants to rest. There wasn't much time between this mission and the last, and somehow it left him snappish and uninviting, all teeth. He must not have slept well, while he was frozen. 

He is not returned to the ice. No one comes for him. Aggravated at first, and then bemused, and then almost hurt, he waits by the south window, tapping his fingers musically along the glass. The Soldier does nothing. If interrogated, he would call it "keeping watch". It isn't as if anyone's told him what else to do. 

He sleeps. Lightly - he will wake if there are footsteps. There are none. Until there are. 

"Soldier," he hears. 

He feels just peevish enough not to answer. They left him here, waiting, for three days. They can wait, too. He blows on the window, frosting it, and doodles a star. 

"Soldier." 

"Yes?" The Soldier only have turns his head. "What?" 

Luckily for him, the speaker is young and nervous, and plays the part of authority poorly. He eyes him, amused. If the colonel wants to see him, he should have come himself. 

"You are needed." 

Of course; he is rather important, not that there's been much evidence of it over the last few days. The Soldier decides to ride his belligerence a little further. Just a bit. "For what?" 

"The colonel needs your help," he says. "With something new. You are necessary." 

The Soldier turns his head. 

 ***

Vasily Igorevich Karpov is a good person to serve under. The Soldier would know. He's served under masochists and tyrants, hypocrites, madmen, rapists, fanatics. Worse than the sadists and the psychopaths, though, were the soft ones - limp and weak, wavering in their commitment to the Motherland, easily upset by making violence firsthand. The worst people to work with the Soldier are the ones who use him as a rubber glove rather than as a weapon. They always washed out. Or they died. Which is worse? He wonders, coming to a silent halt a few feet from the colonel's clasped hands. To die, or to live on, knowing you were too weak to serve your country? 

"Vasily Igorevich," the Soldier says, after the . And then: "Colonel." 

Karpov doesn't turn to face him. The Soldier knows his face well enough to picture it anyway, absently frowning, on edge. The colonel would be a handsome man if he ever smiled, which he does not. He's frosted steel; cool on the outside, and cooler underneath, never emotional in his decisions, slow to anger, and unstingy in reward when pleased. 

"Come look at them." 

Near the bars at the center of this containment block, the floor transitions from stone to black iron, noisy and clanging under his feet. "I see them," the Soldier says. 

"They were carefully chosen, Winter Soldier. They volunteered, so many of them, but only a few were selected in the end. The woman is my personal favorite. You see her there, the blonde? Strong. And utterly fearless in combat. If her file can be believed, she was ferocious even early in her recruitment. Not an instigator, though. Loyal. Loyal and vicious, much like yourself. Beautiful." 

"I see her, Vasily Igorevich." She is strong. He can see it. "And the others?" 

"Equally impressive." Karpov licks his lips. "Fearless, cunning, devoted. Their strength is not only brute, although as of a few hours ago it is that as well. They were more than soldiers. More than men. It is a new day for the Soviet Union, Winter Soldier. They will topple countries. Empires will bend, or they will break." He turns and looks the Soldier up and down for the first time that day. "Are you sick? You look unwell. Answer truthfully." 

"A running nose, Vasily Igorevich. Nothing important." He swallows, shifting on his feet. His gaze flits. 

"Were you fed?" 

"No, sir." 

"All the better. It would not do to have you fighting on a full stomach." 

Even if he had been fed upon his return, it has been long enough since then for him to have eaten twice more and still have an empty belly, but at the mention of fighting the plates shiver in his metal arm. "Fighting?" 

"Young soldiers are best blooded early, do you know?" 

"Young soldiers," the Soldier repeats. 

"You mimic me like a bird, Soldier. They have just been born again. They are young." 

He keeps his thoughts to himself, dubious, and takes his tongue in his teeth to worry at it. 

Karpov continues. "I intend to see how they move. I hope you are not tired." Whether he is nor not, it goes unspoken that he will do it. If the Soldier said he was tired, the colonel would press him longer. He has no patience for sloth. 

Karpov was not wrong when he called them beautiful. All five of them are lovely in a terrible way, sort of - sort of glittering. The Soldier never knew them before the serum, so he can't say what they  _were_ like, but now, stepping into their containment, he observes. 

They seem comfortable with one another, although not overly familiar. The woman sits stiffly, unblinkingly attentive, her eyes brown and glossy. Beside her, three of the others, all men - including one who must be taller than the Soldier by half a meter - have arranged themselves into casual lounging. Their eyes all find the Soldier at once. 

Except for one. 

One lingers apart from the four. Blonde, neatly groomed. Also taller than the Soldier. Sweat sheens him, either from stress or adjustment to increased body temperature. The Soldier stares at him. Watches him pace. 

Guards stud the walls. They may as well not be there, for all the mind the five pay them. 

"Fight them," is his command. 

He does. 

 ***

He loses. 

 ***

Inane artifacts of nearly-useless knowledge dust the Soldier's mind. He can't recall his own mother's face, but he does remember that all polar bears are left-handed and an ostrich's brain is smaller than its eye. And he remembers about racehorses. When a green colt is broken to the track, an older horse is run with him and forced to lose, boosting the confidence of the younger animal. 

If the Soldier had been told to lose intentionally, he would have understood. He would even have done it. What takes him by surprise is that Josef - the brawny blonde, the one who stood away from the other four - beats him. 

"You are short," he tells the Soldier, before they begin. 

The Soldier taps his teeth together, quietly, to himself, and the whistle screeches. 

Josef pins him. 

The Soldier is usually so much faster than everyone he meets that it stuns him to be outmoved. Thick muscle bands under Josef's skin, he saw that. Still. The Soldier is broader, and older besides. His face heats. He underestimated him. It won't happen twice. They roll apart, the Soldier finds his feet, the whistle screeches - 

"I was thinking that this would be harder," rasps Josef. The Soldier twitches underneath him. 

"Well done, Soldier," says Karpov, and for a moment the Soldier knows confusion - until he realizes it's not him the colonel is addressing. 

Twice again. He lasts a little longer each time, slowly learning Josef's habits, his tells, but it helps only marginally. Josef outdoes him in sheer brute strength. Coincidence, he thinks. Flukes. But he loses and loses and loses and he - hopes he imagines it, that he hears a titter from the back of the room, a giggle echoing in cavernous space. The Soldier meets the floor and the wall and loses a tooth, and grows damp with sweat, and never comes close to beating him. 

Josef says nothing; instead, he yawns. 

 ***

The Soldier is upset. 

He typically masks his emotions well, or at least passably. His tics, though, are easy to read for anyone who knows what they are, and he knows that Karpov does. He smooths out his features as well as he can. 

He is still upset. 

Angry, although he hadn't started angry. He chews his cheek, baleful, watching Karpov inspect one of the others' teeth, eyes, ears, without truly watching. Sitting silently up against the wall, arranged casual, he fools no one. His frustration fills the air like heat. If frustration can be considered the right word. 

"What are you doing?" 

Josef has a voice that is impossible to read. Average timbre, an inflection that could go any of several ways. The Soldier doesn't respond. An unwelcome mix of sensation grips him: fatigue and the dregs of adrenaline, mistrust and confusion and something else that makes his throat thick. 

He continues to say nothing. Josef sits nimbly beside him. "Do you know, I never learned your name," Josef says. 

The Soldier is not entirely stupid. He is aware of when he is being baited. What makes him clench his jaw is that Josef can bait him fearlessly, and they both know it. 

"I never met you before today, though," Josef continues, like they're friends, good friends. "I hope you will not be offended to hear that I am disappointed. You are so very small. I think even Nastya may be taller than you." He sighs, loudly. "Don't worry. Living up to reputation is impossible for nearly everyone. Perhaps you were once good, but I think the age has worn you down. How old are you?" 

"Twenty-seven," says the Soldier. He won't be called old, whether he lost his matches or not. 

"Two years older than me. Then I cannot know why you are so slow." Josef chews lazily at his cheek, and abruptly every muscle clenches. The Soldier can see it. The serum is twitching at him, pinching and pulling at nerves and tendons that previously scarcely moved. 

"The twitching will stop," the Soldier says, flat. 

If he had meant it kindly, Josef did not repay him, only looked sideways at him, his trembling smile white and insolent. 

"I don't want to make an enemy of you." Josef might be earnest, or he might be trying to provoke the Soldier further. "We are both here to serve our beautiful Russia." 

"Then maybe you should learn how to serve." 

"There is more than one way to serve, Soldatchka. I am thinking that these old men should learn that, and you, too." 

"You are arrogant." Had the Soldier ever been like this? 

"The strong can afford to be arrogant. I see why you are not." 

The Soldier shifts the plates of his arm. 

It is in the next hour that hell breaks loose, the soldier forced to buoy the colonel to safety. The rest of the guards he leaves to fend for themselves or die, as they choose. And once it's over, the Soldier could almost smile. 

Insolence and arrogance may have a place in the West, which is where the Soldier suspects Josef has spent much of his time in the field, but for a true Soviet soldier, they are worse than useless. Josef could be as strong and quick as he liked. If he was a poor soldier at heart, the Soldier would never worry about seeing him again. Good riddance. 

In the hallway fifty yards down from the containment block, he leans over to card the sweat from his hair. 

"Winter Soldier," says Vasily Karpov. 

He works the smile from his face. "Yes." 

"Why do you look so pleased with yourself?" Karpov has yet to remove his bloody uniform. He never does. 

The smile is no longer difficult to keep down. "I am not," he lies. "Sir." 

Vasily Karpov smells dishonesty like hunting dogs scent rabbits.

The Soldier licks his lips. They're so chapped, it will only make them worse. "I only want what is best for our beloved Russia," he says. That's true. He has only ever wanted that. His shoulders both twinge, aching, aching. That should be all he says; if he was smart he would stay silent. He's not. Although the Soldier possesses his own low cunning, intelligence has never really been his strength. "Why did you make them?" he asks, before he can stop himself. "You didn't have to give them that." 

Karpov raises an eyebrow. 

The Soldier sniffs - running nose - and doesn't flinch. 

"I am not in the habit of being questioned by subordinates," says Karpov. "I trust you haven't forgotten you are one." 

"No, sir." 

After a beat, Karpov lets his eyebrow down. The Soldier envies that. His own eyebrows don't function as independent operatives. "I will answer you, but only this once. Sit. Your shoulder must hurt." 

He sits. On the floor, since there's nowhere else. 

"They make you nervous. Understandably. I am not a man who fears easily, but neither am I a man who lies. The five unsettle me. They unsettle my men as well, even those who are accustomed to you. But their loyalty is to their country." 

"So is mine, Vasily Igorevich." 

"And mine. The world is changing, Winter Soldier. It will not leave us behind." 

 ***

In a week, the Soviet Union is dead. It will be three years before the Soldier wakes to learn it. 

He doesn't get to go home. 

**Author's Note:**

>  _cavesson (noun): a type of heavy bridle, which lacks a bit and has a thick noseband fitted with rings to which a lunge rein may be attached._
> 
> Is it a metaphor? Is it me running out of title ideas and naming my fics after the first object I glance at? You decide!
> 
> If you're someone who's read all my fics and is getting suspicious of the increasing number of equine-related references: they say write what you know, and I am a Weird Horse Girl. I know about horses. That's pretty much all I know about. 
> 
> This one was not that exciting, I know, but hopefully you liked it anyway! I got started writing it and then it meandered, but someday I want to write something better about Josef and the rest of the other Winter Soldiers. 
> 
> For some reason I had thought that Karpov was a general, but according to the Internet he is a colonel. If the Internet is wrong, I will be very upset. There's also no source for "Igorevich" being Karpov's patronym, but there doesn't seem to be anything out there about the parentage of this one minor Marvel villain, so I made it up. 
> 
> Please comment/kudos if you enjoyed!


End file.
